Easy: The Most Likely Places You'll Find Free Wi-Fi

You can find some free Wi-Fi love at the local public library, McDonald's, university campus, independent coffee shop or hotel lobby. Not all campuses offer free Wi-Fi though, so give the destination a ring before you hoof it over there only to be disappointed.

If you're in a residential area, a little war-driving with the right equipment can turn up an open "linksys" hotspot. Rather than breaking open your conspicuous laptop, use your Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone or a Wi-Fi scanner keychain to scan and detect networks. (See the smartphone apps for finding open networks below.) The serious nerd can even outfit him or herself in a Wi-Fi scanning t-shirt, hat or pair of sneakers. (Thanks, adrian_rich!)

Medium: Employ Wi-Fi Scanner Apps and Look-up Tools

Sometimes the built-in scanner on your smartphone or laptop can be too slow or won't give you all the information you want about area networks. Here are some free apps and tools for scanning and finding free Wi-Fi networks.

On the Mac, iStumbler is the free scanner application of choice. iStumbler offers an informative table of nearby hotspots, including their names, security mechanism, channel, signal and noise percentages, and MAC addresses. iStumbler hasn't been updated in a long time, and it didn't work as well as it used to on my Snow Leopard installation. For a pay-for alternative to iStumbler, check out AirRadar ($US16/license, free trial available).

Smartphones: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android
Your Wi-Fi enabled smartphone can scan for nearby networks using its built-in antenna, but a few apps let you search near your location or another location, too.

On the iPhone, I got the best results from JiWire's Free Wi-Fi Finder, which searches areas by zip code or your current location. (You can also use the mobile JiWire webapp at iphone.jiwire.com.) Other iPhone Wi-Fi scanner apps include WifiTrack ($US1) and WiFiFoFum ($US3).

Finally, from the "don't be a jerk" files, if you absolutely have to, you can force your way onto a WEP-secured wireless network. Here's how to crack a Wi-Fi network's WEP password with Backtrack. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, of course—be prudent about hopping someone else's virtual gate.

Comments

Some (particularly airport) networks are unencrypted, but still need a login. Over such networks it is sometimes possible to tunnel IP over DNS. Quite technical, and you need to be running your own server (or two). But sometimes possible.

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